My Lords, in moving Amendment 267A, I will speak also to Amendments 267B and 267C.
Amendment 267A proposes a new form of unpaid adjustment leave similar to parental leave—a modest entitlement of a one-off period of at least four weeks for a kinship carer during the first year after a child moves in. Often children arrive without notice and it may be unclear how long the child will be staying or whether it will be a long-term arrangement. However, the children have immediate and complex needs. Friends and kinship carers often lack parental responsibility when children first arrive because it takes time to arrange a legal order. Adjustment leave would meet kinship carers’ urgent need for time to adjust to the upheaval in the children’s lives, apply for a legal order, a residence or special guardianship order to secure the care of the child and attend numerous meetings, and would reduce the prospect of the carer being pushed out of their job as a consequence. The challenges they face were well articulated in the debate on the previous amendment.
Adjustment leave would be available for a kinship carer who can demonstrate that the children cannot live with their parent. A qualifying employee would have to meet prescribed conditions and the adjustment leave period would be calculated in accordance with regulations made by the Secretary of State. While they are seeking to secure the necessary legal orders, kinship carers may not fulfil the prescribed circumstances which the Secretary of State may have already, or may in the future, set for access to other statutory employment rights of leave. A modest period of unpaid adjustment leave would give such carers the urgently needed time to act to protect the child. At the moment they are given little or no support. The law recognises the need for an adjustment period for parents but gives no statutory recognition of any kind to kinship carers and no protection against the breaking of the employment contract when they take such urgent leave to care for the child.
The intent of Amendment 267B is to enable those with caring responsibilities—be they friends, family members or grandparents—for a child, a vulnerable adult or an elderly person to take up to two weeks’ leave per year unpaid in order to deal with pressing caring responsibilities. The amendment would give the Secretary of State the authority to define the prescribed conditions for qualifying employees and the period of leave, subject to an entitlement to two weeks’ leave in a given year. Parents of children are entitled to take up to four weeks’ parental leave a year, up to a total of 18 weeks, but many other carers do not have any statutory entitlement even to unpaid leave for a caring need, with the possible exception of a few days’ emergency leave.
6.45 pm
As a society, we face an emerging care gap in informal care, which arises because of the cost of care, the lack of affordable childcare, more older women working, an increasing dependency ratio and people living longer. An increase in the number of elderly people, government policies and socioeconomic influences, driving an increase in older people’s and mothers’ participation in the labour market, carries significant consequences for the availability of informal care. For example, if the employment rates of older women continue to rise, there may be, in the absence of affordable childcare, a resulting childcare gap, which could adversely affect maternal employment.
More than one in four working families depend on grandparents to provide childcare. According to Grandparents Plus and Age UK, between 2009-10 and 2010-11 the number of children receiving informal care from grandparents went up from 1.3 million to 1.6 million, while the total number of childcare hours went up from 1.3 billion to 1.7 billion. At the same time, grandparents are working longer to address their own economic prospects and the longevity challenge.
London illustrates well the informal childcare gap. Here we have lower rates of grandparental childcare—18% compared with the 32% average for Great Britain. There are fewer grandparents around to help, because of internal and international migration. We also see lower rates of maternal employment and higher rates of child poverty.
The squeeze on living standards for low- to middle-income households would be longer and deeper than projected, the causes both structural and cyclical. Dual earning is a source of protection for household income, but female employment has plateaued in recent years. The high costs of formal childcare and lack of high-quality part-time work act as a significant barrier to maternal and second-earner employment. Low- to moderate-income households will increasingly depend on caring support from family members if they are to participate in the labour market. Securing greater involvement of fathers in the care of their children will not of itself be sufficient to solve the care challenge.
These structural pressures are compounded by the increasing numbers of elderly people needing care. Increasing numbers of working adults will be called on to provide informal care for an elderly family member and to remain in the labour market, keeping their employment contract intact. Age UK has estimated that people aged 50 and over make an unpaid contribution to the economy of £15.2 billion per year as carers. Carers UK estimates that, in less than five years, the number of elderly people requiring care will be greater than the number of their working-age children.
Giving the emerging care gap, radical thinking is required to secure a sustainable care system in the UK. In-work and informal care policies must support each other. More universal access to unpaid care leave may appear radical, but so was the right to request flexible working and shared parental leave when the EOC, of which I was a commissioner, first proposed them. The imperatives for achieving high levels of labour market participation, increased GDP and sustainable welfare expenditure require radical policies to support informal care.
The Secretary of State for Health, Jeremy Hunt, recently commented:
“If we are to tackle the challenge of an ageing society, we must restore and reinvigorate the social contract between generations. Uncomfortable though it is to say it, it will only start with changes in the way we personally treat our own parents and grandparents”.
He wants a change of culture. The Ready for Ageing? report of the House of Lords Select Committee on Public Service and Demographic Change states:
“Publicly funded care alone has never met all the needs of older people who are frail, vulnerable, ill or isolated. As our society ages, more informal care from family and friends will be required and more volunteers. The number of disabled older people in households receiving informal care in England will need approximately to double over the next 20 years so the Committee calls for employers to make it easier for employees to provide informal care, and for the Government to promote how crucial this is”.
A statutory entitlement to unpaid carers’ leave would contribute to achieving a sustainable informal care system. To ignore such a requirement is to avoid addressing how you achieve a sustainable informal care system.
Finally, Amendment 267C seeks to clarify the rights of grandparents to take unpaid leave in emergency situations to care for a grandchild. Emergency leave provisions are available to parents and employers must allow a few days, unpaid leave. There is a concern, shared by Working Families, that existing legislation—Section 57A of the Employment Rights Act—does not make clear that grandparents are entitled to take emergency leave.
In Committee in the other place, the Minister, Jo Swinson, said that the entitlement was available for grandparents relied upon for childcare, but ministerial assurances given in Committee may not hold at a tribunal once the legislation is on the statute book. The Minister chose her words carefully when she said in Committee in the other place that this entitlement was available for grandparents relied upon for childcare.
There is no explicit provision for grandparents in the Act or the DTI guidance—I read them both carefully before this debate. The right to take emergency leave must involve a dependant of the employee and a grandchild may not meet that definition. Section 4 of the DTI guidance identifies a dependant as a spouse, child or parent of the employee or someone who lives in the same household, such as an elderly aunt. Any other qualifying dependant, in order to get access to this emergency leave, must reasonably rely on the employee for assistance, leaving open the meaning of “reasonably rely”. Urgent care of a grandchild may not meet that definition, not unless we get the clarification that this amendment seeks.
Many grandparents and employers are unaware of any entitlement to emergency leave. Clarification would benefit families as it would confirm that they have more options as to who can urgently support the child in emergency situations. Impact on employers overall will be minimal as the amendment will spread the impact of employees’ absence across different employers. It will not increase the overall requirement for absence. I beg to move.